A friend asked me for some suggestions for a book club of friends who want to gather regularly and study some substantial issues together. Without disclosing that conversation, I simply share this list for anyone who wants it. I like reading lists of books others have read. I included some descriptions for most. See if anything invites you for a closer look. I have read these and they gave me important things to think about. Not all are recent. We are too accustomed to racing out to the latest latest thing. There is vastly more I could write about much older works, but this was for a group that can’t meet for a week. Here they are.

Yancey, Philip. Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?. Zondervan, 2014.  Anything by Philip Yancey is worth reading. Thoughtful, and one “acquainted with grief.” He has written much about undeserved suffering and faith. This one is about the irony of the Protestant church that seems to have abandoned its core truth—we are saved by grace—and turned it into legalism and division. Also look at The Jesus I Never Knew, Disappointment with God [on Job] and Whatever Happened to Grace?) He speaks to disappointed seekers because he has been one himself. Thoughtful, but also spiritually alive.

Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation. Ward, a reporter, grew up in the white evangelical subculture. He shares the journey of his disillusionment with its compromises and failures to keep the faith amid the political seductions of the religious Right even as he continues to cherish the Jesus at its core.

James Stewart, The Life and Teachings of Jesus Christ.  A wonderful devotional reading of Jesus’ life and ministry by a masterful preacher from an earlier generation that still speaks to me. A wonderful and readable instroduction to the Jesus of the gospels by a man who was both scholar and eloquent preacher.

Anne Lamotte. Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith. Anne Lamott is honest, blunt, and funny. This was her first spiritual memoir published in 1999.  Coming out of a family of convinced atheists, she was fascinated with God. Great read, and will stir discussion. Also her Bird by Bird. This is a book about the life of writing, but full of wonderful stories and observations of life.

Kathleen Norris, Dakota. A New York poet moves home to the Dakotas to care for her mother and finds a deeper spirituality as she sojourns between a tiny Presbyterian congregation with her mother and a local monastery. Beautiful, moving, and deep.

Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I Have Loved. Kate, another believer who was nurtured by evangelical faith, wrote this amid her battle with cancer and as she taught at Duke Divinity School. Honest, heartfelt, and insightful.

Jonathan Haidt. : The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. The book parents and grandparents ought to read about phones and social media and the damage they are doing. For a more substantive dive, I’d add Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, Chris Hayes, The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource and Nicholas Carr, Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart.

N. T. Wright, Following Jesus: Biblical Reflections on Discipleship.  I like almost everything Tom Wright pens.  He has a series of commentaries called “The New Testament for Everyone,” written for thoughtful laypersons to read.  The individual volumes are “Luke for Everyone, Romans for Everyone” and so on.  Readable, simple, but never simplistic, and with the scholarly reliability of one of the world’s great biblical scholars behind it.

Michael Lewis, The Premonition: A Pandemic Story. From my published review: “Rather than an exhaustive overview of the pandemic, Lewis tells us from the viewpoint of individuals…racing to understand what was coming and sounding the alarm amid the complexity and disconnect that is American healthcare and politics. It is a great read, as all of Michael’s books are, but it is focused on the puzzle of how our society was felled by the virus by our incompetence and inability to move quickly and in unity, of deep distrust bred over decades, the politicization of the CDC,” and, I might add, how we are still tumbling down that rabbithole of disinformation, fear, and distrust. I will humbly companion my own book here, Shadow Prayers:

Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All It’s Worth. I used this book in religion class at Samford. Introduces understandably the different literatures of the Bible and how to read them faithfully but honestly.

Eugene Peterson Run With the Horses, Praying with the Psalms and many others. He has many other books on books of the Bible, a thoughtful and deep writer.

Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Way of the Heart: Connecting with God Through Prayer, Wisdom, and Silence. You might also like his book Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming.

Frederick Buechener, The Sacred Journey. A spiritual memoir (more followed this one). A writer who shaped many preachers and thoughtful laypersons. Buechener 101 is a book of selections from his many writings I used in a class at my church. Listening to Your Life is a book of short selections from his books in daily meditation bites.

Smith, Clint. How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America.  Simply the finest book I’ve ever read about the history of slavery in America, not as historiography, but as a work of understanding. By journaling his travels to significant sites associated with slaveholding in America, Smith tells the story. I felt the anguish, the contradictions, and deeper understanding of what still lives among us as the truth we will not talk about and desperately need to face.

Stevenson, Bryan. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (One World Essentials). Random House Publishing Group, 2014.  Long but very readable story of the Equal Justice Initiative and Bryan’s journey to deal with the inequities of the criminal justice system.

Goetz, Dave L.. Death by Suburb: How to Keep the Suburbs from Killing Your Soul. New York: HarperCollins, 2009. The struggle to live authentic faith in a suburban culture raises interesting and thoughtful reflections in this book.

Thomas, Oliver “Buzz”. 10 Things Your Minister Wants to Tell You: (but Can’t, Because He Needs the Job). St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 2007. Short, but hits hard. What we have avoided in the churches to “keep the church going.” Real, hard-hitting, and will stir a lot of discussion.

Balmer, Randall. Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2021. A short but eye opening story of how racism was at the founding of what began the “Moral Majority” and was the beginning of what became the MAGA movement. It wasn’t abortion—that came later. It was race and private schools that led to the politicization of evangelicals in America, thanks to Jerry Falwell, Sr.

Balmer, Randall. America’s Best Idea: The Separation of Church and State. Steerforth Press, 2025. If you want readable history of how separation of church and state was the vision of the founders, this is it. There is much nonsense and misinformation about America’s “Christian” founding. This work by an eminent religious historian demolishes this argument with facts, not emotions and distortion. And his argument is that their practical separation was one of our nation’s true ingenious inventions, and that it was the best thing that ever happened to religion and the state. After reading you will wonder, “Why are we so eager to slide back into the disaster from which our ancestors escaped?”

Dant, J. (2018). This I Know: A Simple Biblical Defense for LGBTQ Christians [Kindle iOS version]  Also, Gushee, David P. (2017). Changing Our Mind: Definitive 3rd Edition of the Landmark Call for Inclusion of LGBTQ Christians with Response to Critics [Kindle iOS version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com. Dant, a Baptist pastor, wrote this to offer a simple alternative perspective to anti-gay stance of conservative evangelicals. David Gushee’s book is longer, more thorough for those who want a deeper dive into the subject from a more open-minded perspective. A more conservative approach seeking to still be caring to gay persons is Preston Sprinkle, People to Be Loved: Why Homosexuality is Not Just an Issue. Karen Keen, Scripture, Ethics and the Possibility of Same-Sex Relationships.

Byock, Ira. (2004). The Four Things That Matter Most – 10th Anniversary Edition: A Book About Living [Kindle iOS version]. A book on death and dying by a physician who works with dying patients. His four things to say before a loved one dies are profound. I used to teach them to the deacons.  “Please forgive me, I forgive you, Thank you, I love you.”

Peterson Ph.D, J. (2021). The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic [Kindle iOS version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com

Some others worth looking at:

Rachel Held Evans, Faith Unraveled

Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited 

Jenny Dyer, The End of Hunger.

Robert Mulholland,  Invitation to a Journey

A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants

Diana Butler Bass, Christianity for the Rest of Us

Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk

Well, my friends, there you go. These books have found me, spoken in a key moment of my journey and opened some doors. We all have our own wanderings, but in this time of distractions, gaming and 15 second clips, there is nothing better than a long walk in the woods of a book that goes somewhere worthwhile. Enjoy.